opera and concerts in london and beyond

Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

01 May 2013

Shakespeare's lute player/composer Robert Johnson shares a name with the King of the Delta Blues, a coincidence that has led to a plucking amazing collaboration between the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and a group of lutenists. Ukes and lutes will join as one to celebrate the music of both Bobs in a single night.

But an estimated 1,000 of last night's capacity Proms audience (was this the most popular Prom of the season?) got the opportunity too. Each strummed their own instrument in an inspired audience participation event as the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain - 6 men, 2 women, 8 ukuleles - led them in a 4,032-string arrangement of Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

It was the centrepiece of an hour long set that saw the UOOGB bring down the house with everything from a lounge style Anarchy in the UK to a swingin' Wuthering Heights with the Orchestra's inimitable leader George Hinchcliffe on Tony Bennett vocals. Ride of the Valkyries and Saint-Saëns's Danse Macabre proved resilient to rejigging. Their best arrangements render the over-familiar momentarily unrecognisable and Jerusalem - a rare straight treatment - was born anew.

Massed ukes were waved in the air for Robbie Williams's Angels in the second of two canon-medleys which indubitably proved the UOOGB theory there are only two pop songs in the world.

23 November 2008

Gramophone magazine created predictable ripples last week when they published the latest of their trainspotterish top 20 lists, this time the world's greatest orchestras. Or to put it more accurately, a handful of invited critics' twenty favourite orchestras.

But who wants to nitpick whether the Berlin Phil is better than the Vienna Phil? What about those musicians who are redefining (or just abusing) the term 'orchestra'?

Here in no particular order is my alternative top 20. So alternative there aren't even 20 names on the list! Outta there!!!

The all-uke band behind the great British ukulele revival, almost singlehandedly responsible for encouraging a whole generation of neophyte musicians to pick up their first instrument - with more success than any number of state-sponsored initiatives and well-meaning outreach programmes. Just for that, they deserve a medal.

There's more than one musical Wiener in Austria's capital. The Vegetable Orchestra of Vienna plays instruments made from fresh vegetables. They say "The utilization of various ever refined vegetable instruments creates a musically and aesthetically unique sound universe." I say I never knew a carrot sounded like that. They craft new instruments for each performance, so no two shows sound the same.

This video shows the orchestra selecting and preparing their instruments, followed by some concert extracts:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Animal orchestras

After the vegetables come the animals. Nowadays an animal orchestra would be guaranteed to draw the wrath of the RSPCA - and that's just for starters.

But it wasn't always so. In The Cat Orchestra and the Elephant Butler, Jan Bonderson relates how the feline organists of Signor Capelli enchanted 19th century London. And he describes the orgue à cochons of Louis XI's court - a row of pigs with nails through their tails, each of which emitted a differently-pitched squeal. A marginally less unkind version of this was constructed for Gabriel Aghion's 2000 movie Le Libertin - the piggy tails merely tweaked: